The Spring Festival is our "New Year's Day", wax festivals, firecrackers and Spring Festival, changing the year and celebrating, the sun and the moon are long

Citizens buy big red lanterns at the Chinese New Year Market. (Xinhua News Agency, Yu Xiangquan/Photo)

Our current Lunar New Year is actually "New Year's Day", which is the most important festival in Chinese.

"Yuan" is the beginning, the first meaning, "dan" is the morning when the sun emerges from the horizon, so the meaning of the word "New Year's Day" is the first day of the new year, and the first day of the new year can be called the first day of the new year, the new zheng, the new year, etc., also known as the beginning of the year.

There are different years in the early ancient six calendars, when emperor Wu of the Western Han Dynasty implemented the "Taichu Calendar" to determine the first day of the first month of the summer calendar, after which the calendar was constantly revised and changed, but the time of the beginning of this year did not change, the whole country used the unified calendar, including the neighboring countries that were canonized by China also used the unified calendar, all of which were in accordance with the "Zhengshuo" new year on the first day of the first month of the first month, which embodied the idea of "heaven and man isomorphism" in the Chinese character civilization circle. In the era when the summer calendar is the first year of the New Year, there is no "Spring Festival", but "New Year's Day". "New Year's Day" became the beginning of the Gregorian calendar, is the change that occurred after the Xinhai Revolution, when the representatives of the provinces met in Nanjing after the restoration, adopted the world's common Gregorian calendar, on January 1, 1912, Sun Wen was inaugurated as the provisional president, and the payment of his "Provisional Declaration of the Great President" was "New Year's Day of the First Year of the Republic of China", since then "New Year's Day" has become the first year of the Gregorian calendar, and the traditional "New Year's Day" must be renamed. Therefore, in 1913, Zhu Qiju, who was then the minister of internal affairs, proposed that "please set the lunar new year's day as the Spring Festival", that is, the "New Year's Day" that has always been changed to a new name called "Spring Festival".

Of course, in ancient times, there was also the word "Spring Festival", such as the "Later Han Shu Yang Zhen Biography" "The Spring Festival has not rained, and the hundred officials are anxious", but the word "Spring Festival" here refers to the "LiChun" season in the twenty-four solar terms, not the first year of the first month of the first month of the summer calendar. Therefore, the term "Spring Festival" that we are living now began in 1914.

Celebrating the New Year with the beginning of the year has a long history. The word "nian" is used in the oracle bone to mean crop harvest, that is, the harvest is busy all year round, and rest and festivals can be carried out at the end of the year. It is recorded in the Book of Poetry that during the Shang Dynasty, the Zhou tribes changed their age, and at the end of the year, a large wax celebration was held to celebrate "Pengjiu Siyi, known as killing lambs." The picture of "long life without boundaries" in the court of the other side, this kind of festive celebration of changing the new year, is actually the early "New Year".

The big wax (pronounced zhà) was a very important agricultural sacrifice at the end of the year in the pre-Qin period, which later evolved into a New Year's celebration. According to the Book of Rites, the wax festival is dedicated to seven gods, including a cat god who can eat voles and an insect god who is in charge of insect pests, showing a close relationship with the harvest sacrifice in the coming year.

Regarding this pre-Qin New Year ritual, there was also a debate within the master and disciple of Confucius. The Book of Rites and Miscellaneous Notes records: "Zigong looked at wax, and Confucius said: 'Give also happy?' "The people of a country are mad, and they give pleasure to the unknown!" The Son: "The wax of a hundred days, the zeal of one day, and the knowledge of Fei Er." Zhang but not flaccid, Wen Wu Fu can also; flaccid but not Zhang, Wen Wu Fu is also. One by one, the way of culture and martial arts is also'. According to Zheng Xuan's explanation in the Eastern Han Dynasty, after the wax sacrifice, it is necessary to "drink a lot", which is "to rest with the laborers", and this big wine is drunk so much that "the people are all drunk like crazy". Zigong expressed dissatisfaction with the scene of the people reveling in drinking wine during the Wax Festival, feeling that this was too much, and Confucius taught him that the people who worked for a long time needed to relax during the New Year, which was called the principle of one piece and one relaxation, which was not excessive, which was the Confucian middle way attitude.

In addition to the big wax, there are wax sacrifices, with air-dried bacon sacrifices, the "Ritual Record Of the Moon Order" said that the wax sacrifice should be sacrificed to the ancestors, and "the labor farmers to rest", the function is more similar to the big wax, are the New Year rest, but the focus is not on the sacrifice of the agricultural gods, but on the ancestors of the family. In many parts of the modern country, there are still customs of ancestor worship during the Spring Festival, which evolved from the early wax festivals.

In addition to ancestor worship, the wax festival also includes the door god, vesta god, window god, etc. of the house, especially the custom of offering the vesta god should be very old, originating from the fire worship of prehistoric times, this custom has continued to modern times, that is, the small year to sacrifice the stove king. There is a difference between the wax and the wax sacrifice in the pre-Qin period, but because both are sacrifices at the New Year, and in order to rest and relax, so they are mixed together in the Han Dynasty, and the "Guangya" has the saying of "Zhou Yue Big Wax, Qin Yue La", which means that the wax and the wax sacrifice are actually the same thing, but the names of different dynasties are different. Obviously, this confusion suggests that the two eventually merged. Since the Han Dynasty, the wax has disappeared and merged into the wax festival.

There is also an important ritual of the wax festival is to exorcise ghosts, people wear various masks to dance to scare away demons such as plague, and the Analects of the Township Party records that Confucius participated in this ritual activity when the villagers danced the dance to drive away the ghosts. The Book of Etiquette of the Later Han Dynasty: "One day of the first la, the great one, called the exorcism of the plague", that is, dancing the day before the wax festival to drive away the ghosts.

Since it is necessary to exorcise ghosts, then in addition to wearing masks and dancing, you can also use explosions to intimidate demons, and the "Jingchu Chronicles" of the Southern Dynasty records that "on the first day of the first month, the chickens rise up, first than the firecrackers before the court, in order to ward off the evil ghosts", that is, in the early morning of the first day of the new year, bamboo should be burned in the courtyard, and the bamboo will produce a bursting sound, which can scare away the evil ghosts. In the Tang Dynasty, it was still burning bamboo bursting, called "bursting pole", the poet Lai Hu "Early Spring" mentioned that "the new calendar will only open half of the paper, the small pavilion is still gathering the ash of the explosive pole", and the ashes left over from the burning bamboo pole are seen on the pavilion. Later, with the invention of gunpowder, firecrackers appeared, but people still used to call them "firecrackers".

In addition to the firecrackers, there is also the Spring League, which originated from the peach charm that exorcises ghosts. The ancients of the pre-Qin Dynasty believed that peach wood had the function of warding off evil spirits, and volume 86 of the "Art and Literature Cluster" quoted the "Zhuangzi" text: "Insert peach branches in the household, even the ashes under it, the children are not afraid, and the ghosts are afraid", that is, to avoid ghosts with peach branches. Volume VIII of the "Customs and Customs" records that "the county official painted the Chinese New Year's Eve with the wax, as the peach man weeping reeds and the tiger painting on the door", it can be known that the Han Dynasty had a new Chinese New Year's Eve the custom of decorating the peach wood people on the door, and then the peach wood people evolved into peach symbols, and the "Jingchu Chronicle" records that "the painting of the chicken household, the suspension of the reed rope on it, the peach symbol next to it, the hundred ghosts are afraid", it can be known that the southern dynasty has appeared in the peach symbol of the exorcism function.

By the Song Dynasty, hanging peach symbols in the New Year had become very popular in society, and Wang Anshi's famous poem "Yuan Ri" had a description of "always exchanging new peaches for old ones". After the Song Dynasty, the peach symbols diverged, and some of them evolved into door gods and New Year paintings painted with gods and ghosts, and some evolved into red spring stickers with written characters, which became popular in society from the Ming Dynasty, which is our current Spring League.

Therefore, the Spring Festival is our "New Year's Day". The customs of this festival embody the spirit and transcendence of our nation, reflect our views on a better life, and shape and refresh the eternal proposition of "what is Chinese".

Happy New Year.

Li Jingheng